In the ax mrnm contract, Trump gives another blow to American biosecurity, say the former officials

The cancellation of $ 766 million in the Trump administration of contracts to develop mRNA vaccines against potential pandemic influenza viruses is the last blow to national defense, former health security officials said. They warned that the United States could be at the mercy of other countries in the next pandemic.

“The actions of the administration are to dissuade biological threats,” said Beth Cameron, main advisor to the Brown University Pandemic Center and former director of the National Security Council of the White House. “The cancellation of this investment is a signal that we change our posture on pandemic preparation,” she added, “and it is not good for the American people.”

Pandemics against flu killed up to 103 million people worldwide during the last century, researchers say.

In anticipation of the next big one, the American government began to strengthen the country’s pandemic influenza during the George W. Bush administration. These strategies were designed by the Security Council and the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority at the Ministry of Health and Social Services, among other agencies. Plans are quickly based on pandemic vaccines. Quickly move reproaches to the production of vaccines at the national level, ensuring their safety and putting them in arms across the country through the public health system.

The Trump administration undermines each of these stages because it empties health agencies, reduces research and health budgets and issues perplexed policy changes, health security experts said.

Since President Donald Trump took office, at least half of the security council staff was dismissed or on the left, and Barda’s future has been troubled. The best vaccine advisor in the country, Peter Marks, resigned under pressure in March, citing “the unprecedented assault against scientific truth”.

More recently, the recovery of Trump funds for the development of the Arna vaccine put the Americans on a more fragile field in the next pandemic. “When the need strikes and we are not ready, no other country will come to our aid and we suffer considerably,” said Rick Bright, an immunologist and former director of Barda.

Countries that have produced their own vaccines in the COVVI-19 pandemic had the first dibs on the blows. While the United States, which shelters Moderna and Pfizer, deployed the second doses of mRNA vaccines in 2021, hundreds of thousands of people in countries that have not made vaccines are dead in the meantime.

The most relevant pandemic threat today is the H5N1 bird flu virus. Researchers from around the world were alarmed when he started to spread among cattle in the United States last year. Cows are closer to humans biologically than birds, indicating that the virus had evolved to prosper in cells like ours.

While hundreds of herds and dozens of people have been infected in the United States, the Biden administration funded Moderna to develop bird flu vaccines using mRNA technology. As part of the agreement, the US government stipulated that it could buy doses before a pandemic. Which is no longer standing.

Researchers can make bird flu vaccines in other respects, but mRNA vaccines are developed much more quickly because they do not count on capricious biological processes, such as growing elements of vaccines in chicken eggs or cells kept in laboratory tanks.

Time counts because flu viruses constantly mutate and vaccines work better when they correspond to the circulating variant.

The development of vaccines in eggs or cells can take 10 months after the genetic sequence of a variant is known, said Bright. And relying on eggs has an additional risk with regard to bird flu because a pandemic could eliminate billions of chickens, crush egg supplies.

Viely methods of several decades are based on inactivated influenza viruses are more risky for researchers and take time. The Trump administration has always invested $ 500 million in this approach, which was largely abandoned in the 1980s after provoking crises in children.

“This politicized regression is confusing,” said Bright.

A bird flu pandemic can start quietly in the United States if the virus evolves to spread between people, but no one is tested at the beginning. Indeed, the dashboard of the centers for Disease Control and Prevention suggests that only 10 agricultural workers have been tested for the bird flu since March. Due to their close contact with cattle and poultry, agricultural workers are most at risk of infection.

As with many diseases, only a fraction of people with bird flu becomes seriously ill. Thus, the first sign that the virus is widespread could be an increase in hospital affairs.

“We would need to make vaccines immediately,” said Angela Rasmussen, virologist at the University of Saskatchewan in Canada.

The US government could increase the production of existing bird influenza vaccines developed in eggs or cells. However, these vaccines target an older strain of H5N1 and their effectiveness against the virus which is now circulating is unknown.

In addition to the months that it takes to develop an updated version in eggs or cells, Rasmussen has questioned the government’s ability to test quickly and obtain updated licenses, with a quarter of HHS staff. If the Senate approves Trump’s proposed budget, the agency faces around $ 32 billion in cuts.

In addition, the Trump administration’s discounts in biomedical research and its efforts to reduce money for general costs could undermine university hospitals, which makes them unable to conduct significant clinical trials. And its CDC and public health funds in states mean that fewer health officials will be available in an emergency.

“You can’t just relieve it all,” said Rasmussen. “The more time it takes to answer, the more people die.”

Researchers suggest that other countries would first produce bird flu vaccines. “The United States can be at reception like India, where everyone – rich too – has had vaccines late,” said Achal Prabhala, public health researcher in India at Medicines Access Group Accessibsa.

He sits on the board of directors of an initiative of the World Health Organization to improve access to mRNA vaccines in the next pandemic. A member of the initiative, the company Sinergium Biotech in Argentina, tests a vaccine against the mRNA against the bird flu. If it works, Sinergium will share intellectual property behind the vaccine with a dozen other groups in the intermediate income country program so that they can produce it.

The Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations, an international partnership whose headquarters are in Norway, provides funds to research groups developing the technology of rapid response vaccines, including mRNA, South Korea, Singapore and France. And CEPI has hired up to $ 20 million for efforts to prepare for a bird flu pandemic. This year, the Indian government has published an appeal to subsidy requests to develop mRNA vaccines for the bird flu, warning it “present a serious risk of public health”.

Pharmaceutical companies are also investing in mRNA vaccines for the bird flu. However, Prabhala claims that private capital is not enough to provide vaccines at an early stage through clinical trials and large -scale manufacturing. Indeed, there is no market for vaccines against the bird flu until a pandemic strikes.

Limited supplies mean that the United States should queue for mRNA vaccines made abroad. States and cities can compete against each other for agreements with governments and external companies, as they have done for medical equipment at the top of the cocvid pandemic.

“I fear that we see again the kind of hunger games we saw in 2020,” said Cameron.

In an e-mail response to requests, HHS communications director Andrew Nixon said: “We have concluded that continuous investment in Moderna’s H5N1 mRNA vaccine was not scientifically or ethically justifiable.” He added: “The decision reflects wider concerns concerning the use of mRNA platforms-in particular in the light of growing evidence of adverse events associated with COVID-19 mRNA vaccines.”

Nixon did not support the complaint by quoting analyzes published in scientific journals.

In dozens of published studies, researchers have found that COVVID mRNA vaccines are sure. For example, a placebo controlled trial of more than 30,000 people in the United States found that the harmful effects of the Moderna vaccine were rare and transient, while 30 participants from the placebo group underwent serious cases of cocovid and one.

More recently, a study revealed that three of the nearly 20,000 people who obtained the vaccines and the Moderna booster had significant side effects related to the vaccine, which resolved in a few months. Covid, on the other hand, killed four people during the study.

As for the concerns about the question of the heart, myocarditis, a study of 2.5 million people which obtained at least one dose of pfizer mRNA vaccine revealed around 2 cases per 100,000 people. Covid causes 10 to 105 cases of myocarditis per 100,000.

Nevertheless, the secretary of the HHS, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who founded an anti-vaccine organization, falsely called shots coded “the deadliest vaccine ever made”. And without providing evidence, he said that the 1918 influenza pandemic “came from vaccine research”.

Politized distrust in vaccines has developed. Much more Republicans said they trusted Kennedy to provide reliable information on vaccines than their local health service or the CDC in a recent KFF poll: 73% against about half.

If the bird flu became a pandemic in the coming years, Rasmussen said: “We will be screwed on several levels.”

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